I got home today to a stack of mail, which included the 25th anniversary issue of Media Inc Magazine, our local trade publication for the creative services and film industry. I am featured (as are about 40 other professionals, though Chris Conrad and I are the only photographers profiled) in a Q&A format, looking back 25 years on our career path and our prognostications on the future. Three paragraphs made it into the issue, but here is the "director’s cut" of what I sent them.
Describe yourself and your company in 50 words. I provide photography for corporate, institutional and editorial clients all over the US.
How has your business changed over the last 25 years? I could look at any 5 year interval of my career (over 25 years now), and what I was doing at the beginning and the end of any interval would be entirely different. Professional photography is a competitive, changeable enterprise, and my job description is in constant revision.
How have your clients changed over the last 25 years? Well, in the beginning I had "baby" clients: the health club I traded for a membership, and where I cut my teeth on learning how to photograph people, the local hospitals, artists. Gradually the caliber of my clients rose, and I started working for national clients and consumer and trade magazines. For a 10 year period all I did was stock photography, back when that was viable without a coterie of stylists and models. Right now my biggest client is in Baltimore and I work all over the country, and I’m having more fun than ever.
What are your thoughts regarding the next 25 years? The pace of change will only increase, and attention spans will probably decrease. Media outlets for imagery will encompass platforms that will befuddle anyone over 50. Personally, I’ll stay confident in the arenas where I have expertise and curiosity and ignore those that don’t make sense for me to pursue. One great advantage about being 50 is a certainty about who I am and what ambitions do and don’t make sense. I’m becoming more and more interested in teaching and sharing my sensibility about the photographic encounter with the world, and I expect that will occupy more of my life as the decade progresses.
Who has been instrumental in your professional life and why? My fine art background is the foundation for everything I do photographically. Peter de Lory was an early teacher and influence, as well as all the great photographic masters he brought through the Sun Valley Center for the Arts in Idaho in the mid 70’s. Frank Denman and Louis Bencze gave me regular assisting gigs in the early 80’s where I learned the business of commercial photography. I always visit museums when I travel, and they’re my biggest inspiration. Where did Degas place that light source? How did Titian organize the frame with all those writhing bodies?
If you could deliver a message to a young professional seeking a career in your field, what would it be? Always be curious.
On a personal level, what are you a fan of? I don’t make a big distinction between my professional and personal life, as what I bring to bear is my attention to relationship and connection in all those arenas. When I’m not taking pictures (or while I’m taking pictures), I can be watching birds or bicycling or tending to the garden. The proudest accomplishment of my life is my marriage, without which I would not have the success and happiness I enjoy now.
What are your top three uses for Media Inc besides reading it? You don’t want to know.
What is the most memorable event in your business career? What I shot yesterday.
What were you doing 25 years ago? Spring of 1981: I was at Point Reyes Bird Observatory as a field assistant on a landbird research project. Basically, I was crawling through poison oak all day looking for Towhee and Wrentit nests. And taking pictures.
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